24 August–1 Sep­tem­ber 2006 Load­ing Bays At 274 East 1st Ave.

St. George Marsh began just over a year ago in June 2005, with­out pre­med­i­ta­tion, and formed from the pos­si­bil­ity of cre­at­ing some­thing out of a com­mer­cial space in a quiet res­i­den­tial envi­ron­ment in Van­cou­ver. Its place­ment in a non­com­mer­cial sec­tor was impor­tant, with the poten­tial for peo­ple to come across it unex­pect­edly. The pro­pri­etors Gareth Moore and Jacob Glee­son were inter­ested in inter­min­gling muse­o­log­i­cal odd­i­ties with ingestible goods and art, in the hope of con­fus­ing the roles of these objects. The store was in a con­tin­u­ous state of ref­or­ma­tion, growth and dis­per­sal, as items were gath­ered for dis­play, passed on and re-interpreted into other for­ma­tions and combinations.

The name of St. George Marsh reflects the his­tory of the area, which was at one point a wet­land hold­ing a com­plex net­work of streams and rivers. Peo­ple used to pad­dle through, pick­ing swamp tea for evening inges­tion. If you walk south two blocks to the inter­sec­tion of St. George Street and 30th Avenue, and put your ear to the cul­vert, you can hear a long-diverted river still churn­ing away.

St. George Marsh con­tained:
· A video rental department/shelf pre­domi– nantly stocked with VHS tapes.
· A candy bar with rock candy imported from Walton–on–the–Naze, Eng­land, along with gum that tastes like soap.
· A gar­den cen­tre stocked with clip­pings of other plants.
· A book store and Library with books loaned out and rarely returned.
· A gro­cery depart­ment where you could find three kinds of mus­tard.
· A small gallery (Decoy gallery) which held a quiet man­date of show­ing art made for typ­i­cally pri­vate rea­sons, not for the pur­suance of any crit­i­cal, finan­cial or insti­tu­tional acclaim.